It turns out the my naturally lumpy hair has some potentially to be wavy-curly. Who knew?

It all started with an internet query while trying to grow out my hair past shoulder length. My hair wasn’t doing well with the flat iron without cutting it. Then, I started “plopping” to see if waves could do anything useful instead. I ended up adding a few layers to see if that would help shape my hair into something other than a poodle or triangle look.

Now, I’m searching for the ultimate hair gel/mousse. Aussie’s trial today is making my head itch. UGH! Gel works, but makes it a little crunchier than I’d like ideally (wrong gel?), and mousse works pretty well, but doesn’t seem to last as long. I’m diffusing it, which it a totally new thing for me. LOVE the results. Until now, I’ve had the same hair-dryer my mom gave me when I left for college. Cold air diffusers are amazing. Even $20 cheap ones from Target. It takes a lot longer, but replaces the time needed with a straightening iron or curling iron.

My Hair:

I have like 2A-2B hair, so not ultra curly, but “scrunchable”. I need to add clips during the last twenty minutes of drying through the crown to give it some life up there.

The Pros:

If I get out in drizzle winter air, I don’t fear for my life…er, hair. I’m like, “Bring. It.” It get up, spritz, curl some of the bottom layer under, and I’m generally good to go, sometimes adding a few clips up top for volume, letting it dry while I do makeup.The Cons:
Washing takes longer due to needing to let it dry naturally. It’s really better to do that in the morning, except I hate having wet hair in the morning. I’ve not figured out how working out and sweating in the winter and my hair wash routing are all going to merge. I can’t have my hands in my hair a lot. Sometimes, in the evening, I just go for it. All the restraint from the day is gone.

Color:
I need to have my color redone, and I’m a little freaked out by the best ting to do with curly hair. High and lowlights would probably be ideal. Do I want to maintain that? No. Do I want to pay for that? No. So, I’ll be looking at some sort of solution I can manage, probably at home.

I’ll try to add some pics of my journey and some of the products I’m using. I’m interested in what others are using as well.

So, tired of my slow and slowing phone, I decided to bite the bullet. Some fourteen hours later, I’m almost there.

I wish there were a more straightforward guide, but alas, it’s piecing together a lot of information.

You can pretty much figure out how to find an app to help you back up your phone…be sure to put that backed up file on the computer rather than just the SD card…loading a new ROM can wipe the card.

Do a secondary nandroid backup to card. Load and use Titanium backup with some online instructions.

Chose a ROM…this is very hard to do. I lost TouchWiz…native only to Samsung operating systems. Honestly, just cleaning off the bloat from the root, the phone sped up a lot. I may have been able to stop there. But, I had to try. I chose Padawan Kang. It’s the Padawan app, stripped of anything unnecessary to try to increase speed, battery life, and performance.

So far, the most frustrating part of reinstalling apps from Titanium is my lack of forethought to how much time photo data would take to restore. Honestly, had I thought it through, I would not have restored even my pared down “Gallery” PHotos and videos…I would have copy and pasted them in from files on my desktop. Google + is another I would NOT backup data on. I’ve already saved everything to the online cloud anyway….all I needed was the app.

It’s amazing how fast the “USB” storage area fills up. I hope next to most more apps to SD card, and also to figure out ways to increase the available space on my phone for apps. I don’t use a ton of apps, but I still feel I do not have enough space for them.

All in all, the camera and phone were taking about 10 seconds to load, even after cleaning the cache on the phone and closing all unnecessary apps. Now, it’s 3-5 seconds. Still not as fast as an iPhone, but this is a 3-5 year old phone, so I’m happy that I breathed some new life into it.

UPDATE: A week later, I tried the KitKat 4.4.2 for i717. It is even faster, but the camera is unstable and crashes OFTEN, this issue apparently even one for NEXUS users…I would be irate if I bought a new factory phone and the cam wasn’t stable!

Tried 4.4.4 KitKat which fixed that issue, but the back key didn’t work a lot of the time, and there were odd ghosting issues with odd icons that looked like gallery icon search bar UNDER my google NOW search bar and ghosting of status screen. I spend 5-6 hours on the issue and eventually decided to revert back to 4.4.2 and try to overload a “fix” I found while working on 4.4.4 that supposedly fixes the camera. It’s a Pollutions_rom_patch. We’ll see how that goes. I was pleased with pretty much everything else about 4.4.2, especially with the Epic Launcher to reduce the size of icons…I couldn’t deal with the large KitKat ones.

That’s been the theme for me this week. Along with tax season comes the ever mindful question: Where DOES it all go? So, I’ve been in a trek backward, and trying to get a bigger picture of changes in our landscape and how we need to offset. Tiring work. Depressing work. Frustrating work. Work that restrains, binds, reminds.

But, every discipline is like that.

“No discipline is pleasant at the time, but produces a harvest of peace and righteousness for those who have been trained by it.” Hebrews 12:11

I initially had no problems setting up the printer or even the other computers and devices in the household, or none to cause serious delays. It did take me a while to figure out how to get the APP set up on my phone, but relatively painless.

HOWEVER, when I moved the primary desktop, having helped my son build a gaming computer over Christmas, it took TEN DAYS for me to get the printer back up on the network. Here’s what it took.

A. A call to customer service.

I really feel this is something that should be accomplished without calling in professionals, so I never do. However, after having my mother in the hospital for 8 days, suffering the loss of a family friend, and being physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted, plus having the graphics card rebate due in two days, I managed to find the fortitude to pick up the phone.

West Virginia helped me with these facts, which are not stated on the Canon website.

in order to reseat your drivers, the drivers need to be downloaded from the Canon website, especially if you are like me and can’t find the installation disk.

in order to download said drivers, you HAVE to use Internet Explorer. Having used Chrome for 10 days, I was very irritated that there is no warning on the website to this effect.

you HAVE to delete your prior printer from “printers/devices” before updating the driver for it to work well, again this is not on the website.

There is a way to get a printout of your wifi strength, and see whether the printer has found your IP address. EVEN IF it says it is connecting to your WIFI, if it has forgotten your IP address, you still have problems. The only way I found to translate that information was to get a computer close enough to the printer to hook it up by USB. After that, you can go through the process of telling it you want to switch to LAN (which is another name for WiFi, which the average person does not know…why all the lingo to get a printer set up? I have no idea.)

Once the IP is submitted to the printer, it should feed over the network, BUT EACH device on the network has to have the driver update done in the same way (through IE, having deleted the old one first). Also, it is good to clear out the print jobs in the printer cue, and reboot the computer before downloading the new driver, otherwise, you have to start over.

I hope these helps some other soul. I was at my wits end, and though I was initially pleased with the printer, this was annoying. As annoying as setting up my HP after it lost the settings. I had to call customer support every time, and they only did it free up to a year. With inadequate documention. Listen, printer companies, if you want us to do it on our own, give good directions.

I was looking at all the cute tags and arrows and contemplating some serious die purchases, when I realized my Cricut and SCAL might have some of these shapes. Boy, was I right! In the basic SCAL software, there are tons of arrows! And it’s very easy to make some of the other tag shapes I was wanting, in any length or width. Definitely worth checking out if you have an old copy of SCAL laying around. If you don’t, well, too bad, it’s not available for Cricut anymore. If you have a Silhouette, you’re in luck, SCAL IS available for it, which is why a lot of people are moving from the Cricut to the Silhouette.

It was as easy to make these word cards I’ve been seeing for sale on various websites. Just make a rectangle slightly smaller than 4X6 to fit into the pocket, add a word to the top in the font of your choice, then “weld” the two elements together for a united cut. FUN! You can trace this one if you prefer. I’m not going to take the time to upload a file, mainly because it’s so easy to make, and file sharing isn’t really the point of this post…it’s to get people to realize they really don’t need a die for every little thing for Project Life. Just cut on your cutting machine, if you have one already!

You could only do the words as well…I’ve seen them resting on top of photos and it looks super cute! I would make it like this:

with a rectangle welded to the bottom to help in keeping up with all the letters, ease of gluing, and help with spacing and keeping all the letters perfectly vertical. The rectangle would rest under another element most likely, or it would even be cute as is!

Thankful for my husband’s new treadmill, a Sole F80. It’s not perfect, but it’s working. Wish I had an iPad mounted to it that synched my info and provided at my finger entertainment while not losing site of the control panel. But, as it is, I can wind down, meditate, and focus during that time. Lost 8 pounds since January 1 eating more whole foods and keeping a food log (MyFitnessPal). I’d put on about 15 last year through an injury (and eating like a teen with my teens.) Now for the second half of this thing. This part is going to be a lot harder. The leaner you are to start with, the harder it is to lose. I’m 5’3″ and would like to stay at about a size 6, no smaller. I was getting uncomfortable in a lot of my 8s. I hope to catch it while it’s a small problem and while I’m healthy to do it. It’s always by the grace of God, especially through winter months!

I bought a 1st gen Nook off ebay because I can side swipe to turn pages without overtapping a keyboard. Wish it did have an internal light…running with a light mounted on it isn’t working so well, and the treadmill isn’t posited by a good light source. I may have to upgrade my Nook.

Evaluated cycle dieting today where you go off the diet for two days, increasing healthy carbs, preferrably your highest training days. You do 15 calories per pound for a maintenance diet, then go back to 10 calories per pound for weight loss. I’ve basically plateaued for the last three weeks up and down. I think my body may be in starvation mode. I think I’m building some muscle back, too, though…my husband notices, and my pants are looser.

I’d like to get back down to my lower pant size instead of the upper tightness level of my larger pants. I refuse to buy another pants size at this stage of the game. I like the clothes I have.

So, after an injury last Mother’s Day with my foot, I’m back up to run/walking about 3 miles when I want to. I did 3.5 miles on the treadmill last week. Took me a searing 55 minutes. I did it in 25 or less fifteen months ago. Just glad to be recovering.

Love the heart-rate monitor. I can tell my heart is stronger than when I started. I was having to keep my hr at 115 or so to stay “stable” when I started. Now, I can run faster, and my hr doesn’t go higher then 130s. This is great!

I’m eating in a “stressed” way today. Have burned up half of my calories for the day by noon on carbs. Time for some treadmill and recovery of the mindset.

ME: “MAGGIE”

Sifting the joy from the mundane:

recording, photographing, learning, creating.

I am married to the love of my life, as we raise three children, learning the ways of grace.

Magnanimity (derived from the Latin roots magn- great, and anima, soul) is the virtue of being great of mind and heart. It encompasses, usually, a refusal to be petty, a willingness to face danger, and actions for noble purposes. Its antithesis is pusillanimity. Both terms were coined by Aristotle, who called magnanimity "the crowning virtue."

Noah Webster's 1828 Dictionary of the American Language defines Magnanimity as such:

MAGNANIM'ITY, n. [L. magnanimitas; magnus, great, and animus, mind.] Greatness of mind; that elevation or dignity of soul, which encounters danger and trouble with tranquillity and firmness, which raises the possessor above revenge, and makes him delight in acts of benevolence, which makes him disdain injustice and meanness, and prompts him to sacrifice personal ease, interest and safety for the accomplishment of useful and noble objects.[1]
(Source: Wikipedia)

MAGNANIMOUS WORK

"We shall not waste our time in looking for extraordinary experiences in our life, but live by pure faith, ever watchful and ready for His coming by doing our day-to-day duties with extraordinary love and devotion." ~Mother Teresa

MAGNANIMOUS LIFE:

"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not come. We have only today. Let us begin." ~Mother Teresa

MAGNANIMOUS LIFE

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.
-Harriet Beecher Stowe

MY DESIGN

Z Necessary Links

YOU CAME; I SMILED

948,412 Magnanimous Visitors

Please know that I am not posting as an expert, but as a fellow traveler. I recommend that you research and double check things on your own before taking any advice or instruction from this site. Information is given in good faith for the time period in which it was written.
I am also an affiliate of the Sure Cuts A Lot software, for Cricut, which means you don't need Cricut cartridges to cut any font or .jpg on your computer. I get some pocket change for introducing you if you choose to buy it by clicking on my site. And we all know I need more cardstock, so I do appreciate it. I sometimes review other products for a fee, but I am not required to give a positive review, and post honestly as to my experience. I hope you find this useful.